Social Media Overview

What You Should Know About Social Media Marketing

Building a social media presence is not likely to bring you instant results or sales. That’s right—it’s not an instant solution—and if anyone tells you differently they are lying. However, in our technology-driven world, social media is a powerful marketing tool to build an audience.

Think of social media like a rock band playing a concert. A band could start by playing in a local park and a few people would stop to listen. The more often the band plays, the more people who would hear—and word would begin to spread about the great free music. Soon the audience could grow to stadium size, and that kind of growth leads to product sales, concert ticket purchases, and loyal fans who want more of what the band has to offer.

Social media is a stage for building an audience and getting your message out to the masses, though it takes time to build a loyal following. And just as the band must start with great music, you must start with great content. We believe that a blog is the heart of a great social media strategy and here’s why:

Google loves fresh content. The more often you update your blog, the more relevant your site becomes with Google, thus raising your website ranking and increasing traffic.

The more content you have on your site, the more reasons you give Google to find you. For example, let’s say you’re the author of a book about allergy treatments and you write a blog post entitled “Holistic Treatments for Seasonal Allergies.” Because you update your blog often, your site is already optimized with Google. Now when a user searches for “holistic allergy treatments,” there’s a darn good chance your post will get served up in the top results. That user stumbles on to your blog post, likes what he sees, and then discovers you wrote a book on this very subject. Guess what happens next? Ideally the user will make a purchase, sign up for your newsletter, or follow you on social media. The goal is to inspire the user to take action.

Each new blog post that you write should be shared with your social media networks. That means taking the blog title and web link and posting it to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and Pinterest. Then the people in your networks can see your content, click through to your site, and you end up with more site traffic. And the more consistently you share relevant and useful content, the more loyalty you build with your audience. They may not purchase the first time they click through. But after seeing numerous posts about interesting topics, you can bet those efforts lead to a loyal audience and eventually to an increase in sales.

Social media is powerful, but it’s not an overnight solution. It should be part of a multi-faceted marketing plan. It does not replace all other forms of marketing, but it compliments your collective marketing efforts.

Social Media Benefits

Grow an Audience – Share great, relevant content that appeals to your target audience and they will begin to find, engage and follow you.

Build Brand Awareness – By sharing great content online, you can establish your authority in your field. Social media allows you to demonstrate your expertise in your subject matter, serve as a resource for your audience, introduce new prospects to your brand, and solidify brand messaging with your audience.

Boost Website Traffic – As you share links to your blog posts across your social networks, your followers will click through and visit your website. Also, Google pays attention to social currency. The more users who “Like” your content or retweet it on Twitter, the more clout Google will give to that particular post, thus increasing chances of it showing up in Google searches.

Increase Influence – When you build a large social media following, others will notice. The author with 10,000+ followers on Twitter has far more influence than the author with 1,000. A larger network demonstrates influence and causes other audience members to pay attention.

Expand Social Proof – As your social media following grows and you deliver great content on a consistent basis, your content will get shared by others. As your followers retweet your posts on Twitter, “Like” them on Facebook or Google Plus, or “re-pin” them on Pinterest, they expose their followers to your work, bringing you new fans and more website traffic.

Inspire Sales – Though most social media marketers don’t see immediate or rapid sales with social media, what they see is long-term engagement and sales that eventually come from a loyal audience. For example, let’s say that in six months you plan to host a live event. By building an audience via your blog and social media in the preceding months, when it’s time to promote the event you’ll have a loyal audience eager to learn more about what you have to sell.